Friday, June 29, 2012

So Miss Kathleen texted me this pic this morning...she just harvested a bunch of Shiitakes at the Farm she is working on back east, Silverbrook Farm. I can't say I'm not jealous! While we are almost ready to start lab work, she is already flushing! Soooo Exciting!

An exciting day! The three independent air systems arrived and are
ready to be installed. I opted to try out the Stamets Air System II for
all three grow rooms. Basically these systems control the high
humidity and air exchange needed to flush the CO2 from the growing
mushrooms. After emailing back and forth with a few folks, I'm going to
set it up a bit differently to get a more accurate temp and humidity
level in the rooms. The air is going to be brought to the correct
temperature with swamp coolers out side of the grow rooms then it will
be channeled via a duct to the blowers that forces air through a HEPA
filter and into the grow rooms, there is also a Humidifan with a running
water line that Atomizes the water droplets to humidify the room up to
100%...The change that I'm going to make is pretty simple. It is
suggested to place the Humidistat in the ducting right after the
conditioned air penetrates the HEPA filter...I'm going to instead put
the Humidistat on the wall of the grow room, giving a better reading for
the rooms humidity level. This is a common problem with this system
and i believe it can be fixed by doing this. We will see!

The
Laboratory is coming along quickly, everything is painted and sealed
except for the floor. I'm going to open the pours of the concrete
tomorrow with an acid and then seal it with a colored stain. I know
there is no good way to paint and seal concrete so that it doesn't need
to be painted constantly, but luckily there are no shoes allowed in the
lab! Only Booties or clean socks because of the high amount of bacteria
levels found on shoes...so i know the wear and tear on the
sealant/stain will be minimal. If i had all the time in the world, id
lay down linoleum but that ain't gonna happen this season! End of this
week and next we will Install dust sealed lights and electrical outlets,
build our laminar flow hood for sterile transfers, slanted grain jar
shelving and finally bring in metal racks on wheels for our sterilized
substrate to incubate on. The last step we are figuring out is what
kind of initial air system to install. It has to maintain a constant
temperature and be filtered through an electrostatic filter and be able
to do hourly air exchanges. We are thinking an air recuperation that
saves on heating and cooling coasts by using the recirculating air to
equalize the temperature of the incoming air without the streams ever
coming in contact with one another. The Laminar Flow Hood will recycle
the electrostatic filtered air already in the lab's positive pressure
environment, thus lengthening the life of the costly HEPA filters that
are part of the Laminar Flow Hood.

I'm really
hoping to have grain spawn incubating by the beginning of the month,
this way we will have the time to finish up the growing rooms air
systems and build out custom 55 gallon drum Autoclaves for steam
sterilizing the substrate!